


Glow In the Dark

by JazzRaft



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Cultural References, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 04:42:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11433387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JazzRaft/pseuds/JazzRaft
Summary: Nyx invites him out to a celebration in the immigrant district, where no one knows his name or no one really cares. Because the music is loud, the fireworks are bright, and the night belongs to them.





	Glow In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> purely self-indulgent fluff, inspired by my own rained-on experience at a fireworks show this past saturday. wet, but fun

“Just so I don’t lose you,” Nyx said, cracking a few loops of neon yellow and green and blue around Noct’s wrist.

Noctis slid a pointed glance at the surrounding revelers adorned with matching glow stick bracelets, but Nyx was adamant that the glow-in-the-dark adornments were pivotal to his safety. Noctis couldn’t argue with an expert in security, nor with the child-like sparkle in his eyes. Heart of a ten-year-old, his boyfriend.

For all the parties that Noctis had been invited to or was forced to host to keep up appearances, none of them compared to the cheerful chaos of the immigrant district. Galahdians knew how to celebrate a damn holiday.

He’d learned to dread parties – loathe them, even. He quickly realized that being a prince meant he couldn’t have any fun at these royally ordained events. It was always black-tie and fine dining and formal conversation, every word said in an oddly mute lull, as if a single, raised voice might incite an international incident. Galas in the Citadel often felt like he was attending a wake rather than a party.

But deep, deep down beneath the heart of Insomnia, he found his city’s pulse. Food vendors, craftsmen stalls, musicians, and street performers brightened every alley and corner. The streets were burnished with the colors of fire, the fluorescent lights of open shops bouncing yellow off of clay-and-brick walls. Cook-fires splashed orange across the roads, warming red coals of open grills and lashing out the back doors of bustling restaurants. Long ropes of lanterns weaved between shop awnings and strings of lights wound around streetlamps and support beams and tiny potted trees on front stoops and shop windows.

Deep, purple banners were draped across doorways and bound around the necks of the strange, round guitars of the players dotting beneath every other streetlamp. Noctis recognized veins of the color in the passing bounce of braids and beads, twined in bracelets around inked wrists, and spinning in ribbons off the batons of dancers entrancing the crowds with intricate twists and twirls and arching circles of violet in the burnt-orange evening.

Everything was so bright and so loud and so _warm._ The streets and shops were stuffed with people, skin half-bared against the weighty heat clustering the narrow streets. Between the roaring ovens and wild gestures of dancers to the lively tingle of guitar strings and drumbeats, the district was on fire. A fire Noctis had grown intimately comfortable with.

It breathed the same heat as the body which warmed his own each night. The body which enfolded him in a protective arm as they inched through the packed streets. Noctis had been nervous to come revel in the celebrations with Nyx, afraid that his presence as the Crown Prince might stir up discontent among the displaced and disillusioned denizens of Insomnia’s lower districts. But Nyx assured him that, so long as he was by his side, he would be safe. If Noctis believed nothing else, he believed in that.

As the night stretched on, Nyx’s promise held true. People were too enthralled with their own company and all of the sights and sounds and smells to pay much mind to one face in the crowd. And as the shadows edging along all of the lights deepened with the darkening sky, features faded beneath heady flavors and heavy lids.

Which was why Nyx insisted on the pack of glow stick bracelets from one of the foot salesmen.

“You look good in neon,” Nyx teased, snapping some matching sticks around his own wrist, struggling with the tiny plastic connectors before Noctis rolled his eyes and played the adult for his full-grown toddler.

“To hear you say it, I look good in neon, in denim, in leather, in hand-me-downs, in plaid, in…”

“You got me, officer,” Nyx said, raising the hand Noctis wasn’t lighting up with glow sticks in surrender. “I think you’re pretty. If that’s a crime, take me down to the station.”

Noctis snorted, spinning the glowing rings of plastic on Nyx’s wrist when he finished securing them. As he did, an animated rhythm of hands clapping and voices chanting proceeded down along the street like a gust of wind. An impromptu parade of musicians and dancers and some of the performers they’d paused to admire during the night herded down the avenue, clearing crowds and absorbing them into the whirlwind march of musical mania.

Drummers slapped and skipped beside sitar players and flitting flute players and a hundred clapping hands and voices chanting along to the same song in fond and familiar harmony. Noctis knew the tune. Nyx often hummed or whistled the same melody when he was performing idle tasks – tossing laundry in a basket for the local laundromat, flipping eggs and bacon in a skillet on their mornings spent staying in, waiting for the coffee to finish brewing.

“Calling for Rain” was one of the most significant hits in Galahdian pop-culture, and had become a staple of this holiday. It was a very old custom from the cluster of islands, beseeching the elements for calm waters in the summers for the safe trading of their sailors, and plentiful rain to spare the land from drought in the dry seasons. It was a thousand years old and had grown into a celebration of good fortune and culture and everything representative of Galahd. Noctis was afraid he might be an intruder on the event when Nyx explained the history of the holiday to him, but Nyx assured him that it was something he wanted to share with him. Something that many of his countrymen wanted to share, if only their culture was respected enough to do so.

The raucous beat of the music was infectious, beating into the body next to Noctis in the tap of a heel and the drum of fingers on his thigh. Nyx’s hand slid down his arm and wound through his fingers, tugging him into the parade of dancers before Noctis knew what he was doing.

“ _No_ ,” he objected when he met the broad smirk on Nyx’s face and was pulled into the swivel of his hips. “No, no, I can’t dance, Nyx. Not like this. I know boring ballroom, not this, it’s gonna be ridiculous…”

“That’s the point!” Nyx yelled over the deafening tide as they were swept along with the parade. “We’re supposed to be ridiculous! You’ll look more ridiculous if you’re the only one _not_ dancing!”

Sweat and spice and the sizzling heat buffeted him on all sides, stumbling along to the skipping steps of the procession. He gripped Nyx’s hand so tightly that he could feel his pulse against his palm, terrified of being trampled. But as Nyx promised, he was safe with him. His glaive held him fast and close and skillfully steered him between the denser clots of the parade, body moving in time with the music.

Nyx grinned at him, the flash of his teeth brighter than any of the paper lights and glowing fires warming the edge of Noct’s vision. It was hard to deny him when he smiled like that, so unbridled with pride and joy in being with his people and with Noct and having one night where no one had to care about anything but having a good time.

Noctis smiled back, happy to see Nyx this happy; happy to explore this vibrant celebration with Nyx as his guide. Noctis followed Nyx’s lead in the dance, though there was no form or frame to abide by. It was just pure movement, following after the instinct that the fast, raw strokes of the song inspired in his blood. It was all loose limbs and foot stomping, bouncing joints and random twirls. All in hand with Nyx, safely guided by the light of his eyes and the deep, bark of his laughter.

It was intoxicating. The music was magnetic, the dancing so liquid and free of any rigid practice; the sights and the smells, so exotic and new and inviting. He didn’t know a single person there – and they didn’t seem to know him – yet these strangers felt like old friends, cheering each other through the knotted steps and rampant chanting. Time melted into the steamy night and there was nothing but impulse and landmarks to mark their passage through the district.

The song ended when a thunderous clap, louder and singular over the rest, exploded overhead. The chanting and singing turned into applause as the parade of people paused in the middle of the street to herald the start of the fireworks.

“You made it,” Nyx chuckled as Noctis collapsed into his chest, breathing heavy and sweating and laughing and beating an exhausted fist into Nyx’s shoulder.

“Where do you find the energy for this?” he gasped, pooling beneath Nyx’s arm as they adjusted to watch the fireworks display.

Nyx merely smiled, secretive and soft before the lights in the shops turned off and the streetlamps dimmed down and they were surrounded by strings and rings of neon glows. Nyx’s arm squeezed Noctis closer in the dark, loops of color bright in the corner of his eye as his hand wrapped around his shoulder. Noctis reached up to link his hand with his, and then the colors all around them vaulted into the sky, the burst of fireworks matching the decorated glow of the crowd.

Glittering blooms of golds and reds and violets and everything exploded beneath the ethereal shimmer of the Wall. The loud pops pushed into Noct’s ears, trumpeting deep, and the flashes made his eyes squint, but he couldn’t look away. As bombastic as fireworks were, there was a certain magic to the hiss and shimmer of them that was captivating. Especially when the splashes of color lit up Nyx’s face, cobalt blue and crimson and making him seem all the more unreal. Like he was a spirit of colors and was made purely elemental, torn out of Noctis’s dreams and lovingly rendered onto the canvas of reality.

A droplet of water bled the colors down his cheek. Then another whisked past the tip of Noct’s nose. And then, all around them, faces were breaking into squeals of panicked delight and the crowd started dispersing under cover as the rainfall suddenly cascaded over the festival. Nyx muttered a curse, Noctis laughed, finding himself pulled along on Nyx’s rainbow-glow under the nearest awning they could find.

The rain came fast and hard, pummeling into the concrete and drenching the crowds, pulling shirts and canvas bags over their heads in an effort to flee. Overhead, the fireworks thundered on, filling the air with a burnt smell and dropping the smoke from the sparkling explosions down into the alleys beneath the carpet of moisture. Smoke and steam billowed from the site of the fireworks show, and the pyrotechnics kept brightening the building faces and enchanting chaotically giddy revelers.

“Guess all that old, dead magic really works,” Nyx chuckled when they were safe beneath a café awning.

They were soaked and sticky and Noctis couldn’t stop laughing beneath the persistent blasts of firecrackers in the air. Nyx dragged a hand through his dripping hair, looking awfully off-put by the precipitation.

“I didn’t realize you were so vain,” Noctis teased as Nyx repeatedly raked his fingers through his hair in an effort to tame it.

Nyx narrowed his eyes at Noctis, glinting dangerously in the varied lights before roughing a hand through Noct’s own hair. Noctis yelped in surprise, trying to duck clear of the attack on what he knew was a drooping and wrecked mess from the downpour. His escape efforts were thwarted by two strong arms scooping him into Nyx’s chest, giggling protests silenced by a damp kiss.

Noctis hummed in contentment, wrapping his arms around Nyx’s neck, wet bodies plastered together and rocking to-and-fro, still high on the music in his head and the pounding of fireworks glittering down from the edge of the awning.

“If I’m vain, it’s only to grab your attention,” Nyx told him, grinning from ear to ear as he stole the ends of Noct’s breath with the parting of the kiss.

“Oh. Well, if that’s the case, you have my attention. And my compliments. You look like a very dashing, drenched dish-towel.”

“I do try.”

Noctis smiled again. His cheeks felt sore from how much he’d laughed tonight. His whole body felt lighter beneath the wet drag of his clothes. He felt like he never wanted to go home, like he didn’t want the rain to stop or the night to end or have the dawn break tomorrow and force the shopkeepers to take down their lights and banners and carry on into another day. He wanted it to be like this all the time, holding Nyx’s hand for anyone to see and no one to care. Kissing him on a street corner like a dozen other couples, not hiding in the shadows of the alleys because they were afraid of how the world might tear them apart.

“Coffee?” Nyx murmured, catching droplets of rain on Noct’s cheek as a gust of wind spattered them beneath their shelter and sent steam racing around their ankles on the cooling road. “Back at my place? Dry off after the rain stops.”

“Yeah,” Noctis agreed, bumping his head beneath Nyx’s chin to settle against his chest and watch the end of the fireworks show.

The fireworks finale cackled over the rooftops, raining sparks down with the tiny hurricane force cooling along the clotted streets. Colors scraped through the sky and painted his lover’s face with their light, wild in the primordial night, singing past his own skin with the glow of his own happiness. The boyish wonder and the glow-stick grin as he brought Noct’s hand up to kiss was like watching a firework burst up close. Bundled up in skin and bone and burning into the night when freedom touched the match-tip to his ragged ends.

The deafening drama of the finale finally echoed into the evening, the imprints of its brightness welcomed with a roar of applause. And the silencing of the rain.

“Home it is,” Nyx said, craning his head out from beneath the awning to see the single black cloud that had perpetuated the storm pass with the smoke trails of the fireworks. “Ready to go?”

“Take me to the coffee, good sir,” Noctis said, wrapping his arms around Nyx’s waist, greedily abusing the stickiness of their clothes to press himself close.

Nyx invited the closeness lacing his fingers through Noct’s around his waist, glow stick bracelets matching in the dark.

“As you command, my little prince.”


End file.
